Here We Go Again
20/11/22 07:09
Let's do this, fam. We've got another week coming up so let's make the best of it. I've been keeping an eye on the crypto market over the weekend after the shenanigans with the FTX bankruptcy filing. You have to wonder if one thing won't lead to another, with the end result being some sort of contagion rippling or, worse yet, ripping through the financial markets taking down every asset class imaginable. What pisses me off is that the people involved in the FTX fiasco will likely escape any kind of responsibility because they are 1) well-connected, and 2) major contributors to the Democrat party. This is what passes for justice in the year of the lord 2022 in the United States of America. This, sadly, is our new reality.
The same form of chicanery is currently underway in several states here in the United States as it relates to the week-old mid-term elections. The democrats just keep counting and counting until they have enough ballots to declare themselves the winners of this or that House or Senate seat. As you might guess, the additional ballots needed to secure a win are conjured up out of thin air and delivered or printed on-site where they can be counted alongside valid ballots. Where are the voices of leadership in the Republican party who should be hollering from the rooftops at the injustice of it all? It's fucking crickets. Meanwhile, the Nevada Senate seat goes to the democrat after all the "valid" votes are tallied. The Governor's seat in Arizona has yet to be determined, but the longer the count goes on, the more likely it is that the democrat in the race will emerge the winner. The majority in the House is still undecided.
It's enough for the average Joe to say "fuck it" when it comes to going to the polls every time we have an election. The Democrats are going to steal it anyway, so why bother? I've even considered joining the Democrat party because I'm getting tired of losing. I don't believe in anything they stand for, so that's probably not likely. Who in their right mind wants to join a band of thieves and charlatans whose political platform calls for the complete and utter destruction of our great republic?
Did I mention that we have one town here in New Hampshire with a population of 700, give or take, that turned in some 1,100 ballots for the democrat in the senate race? How does that happen? We have a republican governor who hasn't said a word and probably won't say a word about it. The idea of sending a Trump-endorsed republican senatorial candidate to Washington was a bridge too far for this squishy governor of ours. So much so, that he would rather see a democrat go to Washington to represent our state. In his own words, and I quote, "our candidates are just too "extreme.""
This is the time of year when the average investor starts to wonder about that elusive "Santa Rally" that comes along every so often. We've had such a nasty year when it comes to portfolio returns, with the S&P down some 15% YTD and the NASDAQ down some 27% YTD. Were it not for the 5-10% spike in the market this past Thursday following a surprisingly good CPI number, the S&P losses YTD would be north of 20% and the NASDAQ north of 30%. Have we seen the low for the year in both indices? I guess a lot depends on what the FED does next and how much they depend on data in making the decisions that they make. If you've been out of the market since the beginning of this rout, is it now time to stick your toes back in the water? Is the thought of missing out on a rally such that you're willing to take a little risk after being risk-off for months? How much of a financial bitch slap can you tolerate if you're wrong about jumping back in with both feet? Is capital preservation still key?
I know it's hard to believe, but Katie Hobbs has been declared the winner of the gubernatorial race in Arizona. She's a veritable dolt so let's get that on the record. A real dunce by any standard measure. She never agreed to any debates, either in the primaries or in the general election. Why she was ever even within ten points of Kari Lake in the polls at any point in the race had to be a shocker to anyone who was paying attention. I had the missus watch one or two things where she got to get a good look at this Katie Hobbs, and she agreed that Hobbs was effectively the dimmest of dimwits. I may have even tweeted that I wouldn't vote for Hobbs had she been a candidate for dog catcher, much less governor. She's the perfect stooge to sit at the pinnacle of Arizona's government as governor, where she can ensure that the MAGA movement never gains a long-lasting foothold in the state of Arizona and that Donald J Trump is never elevated to the presidency on her watch.
More insidious than stealing the election from Kari Lake is the fact that they were able to pull off the steal in broad daylight. I guess it's true what they say about how election winners are chosen: It's not the votes that count. It's the people who count the votes. This really is an abomination. Hobbs belongs in jail for the crime that she and her comrades in the Democrat party have committed. Did I mention that she never recused herself from anything to do with the election that she was responsible for administering as the sitting Secretary of State? And now, she's in a position to sign off on the election that she and her people just stole? I'll say it again. Nobody believes that she won the election fair and square. Hobbs was never ahead in any poll in the days leading up to Election Day in Arizona. If we're counting elections that the democrats have stolen this time around, we can now add Arizona to the list right behind Pennsylvania and Nevada.
How do you hold people accountable for this sort of thing? Is Kari Lake supposed to play the gracious loser and just walk away knowing what she knows about how the election was stolen from her? How can she mount a defense without being called an election denier? You know how that term has been bandied about by the main street media as of late. It is designed to tag, taint or paint, the so-called election denier as a January 6th insurrectionist or worse.
This is what scoundrels do when they lose elections. Never mind that democrats like Hillary Clinton and Stacy Abrams and others of their ilk have also not conceded when they've lost their elections. Let's be clear. This election in Arizona has been far from perfect from the start. Machines have malfunctioned; Voters have been turned away in republican districts due to long lines; People checking the election website have seen that their votes were not properly tabulated, ad nauseam. The sitting governor of the state can call for either an audit or a new election. Do it. Do it today. Do it for the people of Arizona.
There seems to be a movement afoot to bring down the MAGA movement at all costs. They are an existential threat to the future of the Democrat party, don't you know? The Democrats want to hold power in perpetuity, and the MAGA movement is the only thing that stands in their way. The democrats and their enablers in the left-wing media denounced each and every republican candidate in the midterms with labels like "extremists," "insurrectionists, and "election deniers." It was an overly broad brush, but it worked in a few races.
We republicans lost a few more races when Senator Lindsey Graham went public just weeks before the election with a proposed bill to limit abortions nationally to 15 weeks or something like that. Who does that? Anyway, we republicans are in the fight of our lives to save our republic from the leftists in the Democrat party. Who better to lead us into battle than the MAGA king himself, Donald J Trump? He's speaking to the American people on the telly later this evening to declare his candidacy for 2024 allegedly. Welcome back, Mr. President!
Fast forward eight hours, and Trump has given his speech as promised. I thought the speech was a bit too long, and if I'm to be honest, I'm getting more than a little tired of hearing the same old stories from Trump that I've heard him tell hundreds of times. I don't understand why he thinks he needs to tell the same stories over and over again. Trump's speech could have been truncated to take out the old stories, and the speech might have still come in a little long. I like that he didn't dwell on the criminality of the 2020 election, which we all know was stolen, although he did catch himself mid-sentence a couple of times just to let us know that it's still a sore subject with him. I also thought that he sounded a little less polished in the delivery of his speech compared to previous speeches he's made. Did he misspeak, or is he just getting back up to speed after not delivering speeches in a while? Is what I watched somehow age-related? The last thing we need after having Bumbles Biden at the helm for two years is to have another befuddled old man looking to take his place.
I'm not saying that I think Trump is bewildered in any way, shape, or form. Maybe I'm more attuned to what these things look like after watching Bumbles make a fool of himself on the world stage repeatedly. I will say that I thought there was something about how Trump took a drink of bottled water a couple of times during his speech that got me wondering. It was almost as though Trump was doing his level best to make sure that his hands didn't shake or something worse as he went to quench his thirst. These comparisons and others like them, however petty they sound, will be grist for the political mill once Trump gets on the debate stage with more youthful candidates. It will amplify and exacerbate any age-related shortcomings we see in Trump. It will remind everyone and anyone watching that it may be time to elect someone more youthful to the highest office in our land. Political leanings aside, think JFK.
I like that everything we're likely to hear now coming out of the Trump camp will be taken in a political context and not just the usual sour grapes we hear coming from the guy standing on the sidelines after losing his last election. Let bygones be bygones, is what I say. Trump needs to keep his messages forward-looking and to the point. People don't like things about Trump, so let's see if Trump can change those things up for the better going forward. I'm not sure we have to worry about his mean tweets since he's not back on Twitter, at least as of this morning. It makes me wonder just a little bit about the outcome of the mid-term elections in Arizona and whether or not Trump's comments before 2016 about John "Songbird" McCain not being a hero back in the day have now come back to haunt those candidates who currently support Trump and who went on to lose this past Tuesday. Do I think that Trump should quit while he's ahead? That horse has left the barn.
I told you that this FTX thing was going to get worse before it got better. It's not just a story about a Bermuda-based crypto exchange run by some 20-something wunderkind that went belly up. We're now finding out that taxpayer dollars sent to Ukraine by the billions in support of their efforts to defend themselves against the Russian invaders over the last year or more were then laundered by FTX and subsequently doled out by FTX in the form of kickbacks to mostly democratic politicians in the United States to support their political campaigns.
How much Ukraine and Ukraine's president Zelensky ended up with is not yet known. Is there any doubt that Joe Bumbles Biden and the Biden Crime Family got their cut? None whatsoever. FTX has been a major donor to the democrat party since the founding of FTX, and we now have a better idea as to how they came by the funds they needed to make said contributions. The extent of the stench around this fraudulent conveyance of funds and the political influence it bought and paid for is almost incalculable. A worst-case scenario, if you will.
Maxine Waters, the congresswoman from California, when asked about the donations from FTX to her campaign, responded as follows: "Both parties received donations." Oh, okay. I guess that makes it okay. Let me see if I have this right. These same politicians who approve the payment of taxpayer monies to fund the war in Ukraine are also beneficiaries of the monies that they are approving. Maybe politicians getting kickbacks is nothing new in the scheme of things, but this thing stinks to high heaven. The United States is the largest donor to the war effort in Ukraine, and Ukraine isn't even on our fucking continent. I guess we now know why we're shoveling money hand over fist to Zelensky and his ilk in Ukraine. We are also starting to see how all of the pieces fit together when republicans have been at their wit's end trying to explain how the democrats did as well as they did in the mid-term elections. FTX essentially funded get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of the democrats.
I have a question. How much did the Minority Leader (Mitch McConnell) in the Senate get from FTX, and what role did those donations play in suppressing efforts to get certain republican senators elected? We know that McConnell played fast and loose with dollars when it came to certain candidates who, were they to win their races, would give Republicans the Senate. He actually withdrew funding from certain senatorial candidates in the days leading up to the elections when they were seemingly on the cusp of pulling off an upset against their Democratic opponent. It's all so obvious now.
Can the same be said for Minority Leader McCarthy in the House of Representatives? We know he pulled funds from the Leavitt campaign here in New Hampshire, so I guess you could say we have the receipts. So, you see now that this isn't just a story about some kid running a crypto exchange. It was also well known that FTX spread a lot of money around to publishing houses to make sure that certain articles were written to cast FTX and, more specifically, its founder, SBF, in the best light possible.
The bottom line here, Ukraine aside, is that FTX funded the theft of our mid-term elections with taxpayer dollars and with the explicit consent and involvement (votes) of politicians on both sides of the aisle. How do they then hold hearings to suss out the specifics of the case? Is this not a criminal proceeding, or are politicians somehow protected by virtue of their protected status as elected officials? How is it that FTX wasn't able to cover its financial shortfalls by yet another tranche of monies approved by the US government before having to declare bankruptcy? Like any other Bernie Madoff-style pyramid scheme, timing is everything,
Can you imagine the consequences had all of this come to light before the mid-term elections? I'm still scratching my head trying to understand why it had to happen at all, especially when you consider that we're still cutting checks to Ukraine. Someone had to know that when this house of cards came tumbling down that they would be exposed. We also know there is a double standard when it comes to the application of the law between the democrats and the republicans. I think we need a few more cards to come out of the deck before we know how this is going to play out.
It sounds like the Republican Majority in the House of Representatives is finally going to look into the Biden Crime Family and their corruption. None of that was happening when the Democrats were in power. They had nothing but praise for their bumbling and demented leader sitting in the Oval Office. You know, the guy who sniffs the hair of young children every chance he gets. Yes, the very same guy that has been taking ten percent off the top of every influence-peddling deal he and his son, Hunter, have put together since they began selling access to everything under the sun.
I was hoping that the American people would go to the polls during the midterms and express their outrage by voting against the democrats. Little did I know that there were other forces at play that would have the Republicans coming up short. Nonetheless, the Republicans are now in charge of the House of Representatives, so proceed they will in taking the Biden Family to task for selling out their country for personal gain. It ain't going to be pretty.
The Ev man and I dropped his car off at the dealership in Exeter last night. We need them to diagnose the code that keeps coming up when I try to get his car inspected. I think the code suggests an issue with the catalytic converter, but my local guy can't tell me with any degree of certainty whether it's something as simple as an oxygen sensor or something pricier like a new catalytic converter. I can't have him replacing parts willy-nilly until the code goes away, so off to the dealership it goes. If it's an expensive fix, then so be it. I'm not going to run around looking to see if I can have it done elsewhere for less. Just bite the bullet, Johnny. Get it done and get it done right the first time. Ev will be happier about it, and so will I. We picked up a couple of subs across the street from the dealership, and I dropped him back at his place. Now, I just wait for the call from the dealership to let me know what they've found. Fingers crossed.
The missus and I stopped into a Chipolte at the mall yesterday afternoon. We were looking to pick up a couple of burritos for a quick pick-me-up. While waiting to place our order, we noticed a few things that gave us pause. The missus was the first to notice that there was a notable shortage of employees compared to what we were accustomed to seeing at this particular store. That, in and of itself, was not a big deal. That said, we watched intently as the lone employee behind the counter rolled up burritos for the customers ahead of us. She was doing a particularly bad job of it.
Her final product resembled more of an engorged mushroom than the usual cylindrically shaped delight that we're accustomed to. Maybe she was a new employee. Maybe she never got the hang of rolling up burritos Chipolte-style. Whatever. We also noticed that the place wasn't all that clean. The missus and I looked at each other, and we decided almost simultaneously that we'd seen enough. Chipolte has had issues with cleanliness before, and it didn't end well for them in a lot of respects. We gave up our place in line and placed our order with a Chipolte across town, where we hoped to do better. Maybe this speaks to the bigger issue of how much of the sausage-making you want your customers to see while they wait in line to place their orders. Food for thought.
If it isn't one thing, it's another. I was just getting started down Ocean Boulevard on my bike the other day when I noticed that my gear shifting became totally untethered. I got zero resistance when shifting from one gear to the next, and I was all of a sudden in either the highest or lowest gear, I'm not sure which. You know, the one that you want to be in when you're going down a steep hill and you want to keep up or increase your speed by the time you get to the bottom of the hill. There was no way I was going to be able to complete my ride. It would require more effort and muscle than I could possibly muster.
I was wondering if I had what it took to get home, much less complete my usual hour-long ride. There was one stretch of road as I headed home where I needed to get off my bike and walk it up the incline. Thankfully, it was all downhill from there. What I discovered once I got home was that my gear wire had snapped, and it was now hanging loose off the frame of the bike. Dang. It's been at the shop now for a couple of days, and I hope to pick it up later today. It's probably just the usual wear and tear kind of stuff. Better that it happens now than during the winter when breaking down on the road can become a little trickier.
The missus and I will be traveling to Massachusetts today to assist a friend (Mr. R) with getting his new iMac up and running. He's been on a PC platform all these past years and is finally taking the plunge. I'll be in the driver's seat for the changeover, and the missus will be lending a hand here and there as needed. Mr. R is not a techie by any stretch of the imagination, so I assume that what I'll find when I get there is that he has nothing more than a collection of documents and a few photos that will have to be moved from his PC to his Mac.
Apple has a migration application that I'll be using for the first time to move settings and other things that are less obvious to the naked eye. If that doesn't work for whatever reason, I may have to use my handy dandy flash drive to move things. This shouldn't be complicated. The good news is that I can't break anything, and I can't lose anything if I get this right. He also has Carbonite, so I might look to download what they have in its entirety just so we have a complete file on hand after all is said and done.
There is somewhat of a fly in the ointment now that the day has arrived to take this trip down to Massachusetts. Apple posted something overnight about holiday savings that they are offering for purchases made between November 25th and the 28th. The offer includes up to $250 dollars off (an Apple Gift Card) for the purchase of certain items, such as Mr. R's iMac. If I'm not mistaken, Mr. R has yet to unpack his new iMac, so it may be worth a try to give the Apple store a call to inquire about their return policy. I'm quite certain that the store doesn't want the return, so they may be willing to negotiate one thing or the other to avoid the physical return of the computer.
So, should we or should we not make this trip? Should the missus give Mr. R a call to see what he wants to do? Knowing Mr. R as I think I do, he is going to want to see what, if anything, can be done to take advantage of the offer. At a minimum, maybe that means delaying our trip until he can arrange to avail himself of the discount, whatever that looks like. We won't be leaving the house here for a few hours, and the missus is still fast asleep, so I'll discuss it with her when she comes around. I don't think not telling Mr. R about the discount is an option. Mrs. R would likely agree with that assessment.
This thing with the Ev man's car has become something of a cluster fuck. I don't even want to tell you what they (Volvo dealership) told me about how much it's going to cost to fix. It's so expensive that I'll need to ask about an aftermarket solution if one exists. Even with the aftermarket parts, the expense will be extraordinarily expensive. And then, thanks to known supply chain issues, I'll be paying more and waiting longer than would otherwise be necessary for the parts needed for the fix. I just can't catch a break with this damn thing. I want to do the right thing for the Ev man here, but it's going to cost me dearly. I'll have a chat with my local mechanic and see what, if anything, he can do about the aftermarket dilemma so we can move forward with getting this fixed. The weird part is that the car runs great, so that's not the issue. It's all about the catalytic converters. It's no fucking wonder you hear about people stealing these things (and getting arrested) left and right. Wish me luck.
What the hell! Who stabbed and killed those four beautiful college students in Idaho? It's unbelievable. I think the coppers are keeping a lid on things as best they can, but they aren't offering much to the public. People living in the community are concerned, and as well they should be, as they have a killer walking around in their midst. No person or persons of interest have been identified as yet, so I have to imagine that everyone in the community is locked and loaded and hunkered down behind closed doors. Are we talking about a deranged drifter here? Is this a lover's spat gone awry?
I was telling the missus that I could see a killer going from room to room, slitting throats along the way. There wouldn't be much noise, certainly not enough to wake a sleeping household from a deep sleep. This is almost Ted Bundy-level stuff, but Bundy was more likely to bludgeon his victims to death than slit their throats from ear to ear. It's no wonder students from the local university have left early and, without permission, to be with their families for Thanksgiving. The missus says that many will likely not return after the holiday. I think she's right.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, the Ev man and I will be heading over to Whole Foods on Tuesday to pick up the items we ordered. I'm a little hard-pressed to call this a tradition, and I'm talking about the Ev man coming with me to Whole Foods, but this is the second year in a row where he's coming along for the ride. He's not a fan of going into these kinds of places, but he did just fine last year, so I suspect he's gotten over whatever hump he needs to get over to do it again.
It was a little disorganized last year when we went to pick up our order, and I think the Ev man found that to be challenging in a fun sort of way. We went here, there, and everywhere inside the store, looking to piece together the items we had ordered online, and it just wasn't falling in place as one might otherwise expect from an Amazon-owned store like Whole Foods. Amazon is all about connecting the dots when it comes to the organization and delivery of goods. No? I wanted to make this paragraph about the Ev man, but it morphed into a larger story about Amazon and its subsidiary, Whole Foods.
I'll finish up this week's bloggy stuff by saying that we did about as much as we could when we visited Mr. R in Massachusetts. We got his new iMac up and running, and that took the better part of the day. It took longer than I expected it would. The migration of his data from his PC to his new iMac was pretty straightforward once we got our arms around it. I'm a little less well-versed when it comes to using PC's so I had a few issues there. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to quit the application, Chrome, on the PC since it was interfering with the migration process that I was trying to get up and running.
I ended up uninstalling the application, and that did the trick. I tried to establish a wired connection between the devices to migrate the data, but that wasn't working out either, so we did everything wirelessly. I also wasn't able to establish a wireless connection between his printer and the iMac. We're going to need to bring a printer cable with us when we go down to finish the job. I wasn't expecting to make a second trip, but there you have it. Here's hoping Mr. R takes my advice and spends a little bit of time looking at iMac tutorials on YouTube. It's a good a place as any to start. You (he) can do this.
The same form of chicanery is currently underway in several states here in the United States as it relates to the week-old mid-term elections. The democrats just keep counting and counting until they have enough ballots to declare themselves the winners of this or that House or Senate seat. As you might guess, the additional ballots needed to secure a win are conjured up out of thin air and delivered or printed on-site where they can be counted alongside valid ballots. Where are the voices of leadership in the Republican party who should be hollering from the rooftops at the injustice of it all? It's fucking crickets. Meanwhile, the Nevada Senate seat goes to the democrat after all the "valid" votes are tallied. The Governor's seat in Arizona has yet to be determined, but the longer the count goes on, the more likely it is that the democrat in the race will emerge the winner. The majority in the House is still undecided.
It's enough for the average Joe to say "fuck it" when it comes to going to the polls every time we have an election. The Democrats are going to steal it anyway, so why bother? I've even considered joining the Democrat party because I'm getting tired of losing. I don't believe in anything they stand for, so that's probably not likely. Who in their right mind wants to join a band of thieves and charlatans whose political platform calls for the complete and utter destruction of our great republic?
Did I mention that we have one town here in New Hampshire with a population of 700, give or take, that turned in some 1,100 ballots for the democrat in the senate race? How does that happen? We have a republican governor who hasn't said a word and probably won't say a word about it. The idea of sending a Trump-endorsed republican senatorial candidate to Washington was a bridge too far for this squishy governor of ours. So much so, that he would rather see a democrat go to Washington to represent our state. In his own words, and I quote, "our candidates are just too "extreme.""
This is the time of year when the average investor starts to wonder about that elusive "Santa Rally" that comes along every so often. We've had such a nasty year when it comes to portfolio returns, with the S&P down some 15% YTD and the NASDAQ down some 27% YTD. Were it not for the 5-10% spike in the market this past Thursday following a surprisingly good CPI number, the S&P losses YTD would be north of 20% and the NASDAQ north of 30%. Have we seen the low for the year in both indices? I guess a lot depends on what the FED does next and how much they depend on data in making the decisions that they make. If you've been out of the market since the beginning of this rout, is it now time to stick your toes back in the water? Is the thought of missing out on a rally such that you're willing to take a little risk after being risk-off for months? How much of a financial bitch slap can you tolerate if you're wrong about jumping back in with both feet? Is capital preservation still key?
I know it's hard to believe, but Katie Hobbs has been declared the winner of the gubernatorial race in Arizona. She's a veritable dolt so let's get that on the record. A real dunce by any standard measure. She never agreed to any debates, either in the primaries or in the general election. Why she was ever even within ten points of Kari Lake in the polls at any point in the race had to be a shocker to anyone who was paying attention. I had the missus watch one or two things where she got to get a good look at this Katie Hobbs, and she agreed that Hobbs was effectively the dimmest of dimwits. I may have even tweeted that I wouldn't vote for Hobbs had she been a candidate for dog catcher, much less governor. She's the perfect stooge to sit at the pinnacle of Arizona's government as governor, where she can ensure that the MAGA movement never gains a long-lasting foothold in the state of Arizona and that Donald J Trump is never elevated to the presidency on her watch.
More insidious than stealing the election from Kari Lake is the fact that they were able to pull off the steal in broad daylight. I guess it's true what they say about how election winners are chosen: It's not the votes that count. It's the people who count the votes. This really is an abomination. Hobbs belongs in jail for the crime that she and her comrades in the Democrat party have committed. Did I mention that she never recused herself from anything to do with the election that she was responsible for administering as the sitting Secretary of State? And now, she's in a position to sign off on the election that she and her people just stole? I'll say it again. Nobody believes that she won the election fair and square. Hobbs was never ahead in any poll in the days leading up to Election Day in Arizona. If we're counting elections that the democrats have stolen this time around, we can now add Arizona to the list right behind Pennsylvania and Nevada.
How do you hold people accountable for this sort of thing? Is Kari Lake supposed to play the gracious loser and just walk away knowing what she knows about how the election was stolen from her? How can she mount a defense without being called an election denier? You know how that term has been bandied about by the main street media as of late. It is designed to tag, taint or paint, the so-called election denier as a January 6th insurrectionist or worse.
This is what scoundrels do when they lose elections. Never mind that democrats like Hillary Clinton and Stacy Abrams and others of their ilk have also not conceded when they've lost their elections. Let's be clear. This election in Arizona has been far from perfect from the start. Machines have malfunctioned; Voters have been turned away in republican districts due to long lines; People checking the election website have seen that their votes were not properly tabulated, ad nauseam. The sitting governor of the state can call for either an audit or a new election. Do it. Do it today. Do it for the people of Arizona.
There seems to be a movement afoot to bring down the MAGA movement at all costs. They are an existential threat to the future of the Democrat party, don't you know? The Democrats want to hold power in perpetuity, and the MAGA movement is the only thing that stands in their way. The democrats and their enablers in the left-wing media denounced each and every republican candidate in the midterms with labels like "extremists," "insurrectionists, and "election deniers." It was an overly broad brush, but it worked in a few races.
We republicans lost a few more races when Senator Lindsey Graham went public just weeks before the election with a proposed bill to limit abortions nationally to 15 weeks or something like that. Who does that? Anyway, we republicans are in the fight of our lives to save our republic from the leftists in the Democrat party. Who better to lead us into battle than the MAGA king himself, Donald J Trump? He's speaking to the American people on the telly later this evening to declare his candidacy for 2024 allegedly. Welcome back, Mr. President!
Fast forward eight hours, and Trump has given his speech as promised. I thought the speech was a bit too long, and if I'm to be honest, I'm getting more than a little tired of hearing the same old stories from Trump that I've heard him tell hundreds of times. I don't understand why he thinks he needs to tell the same stories over and over again. Trump's speech could have been truncated to take out the old stories, and the speech might have still come in a little long. I like that he didn't dwell on the criminality of the 2020 election, which we all know was stolen, although he did catch himself mid-sentence a couple of times just to let us know that it's still a sore subject with him. I also thought that he sounded a little less polished in the delivery of his speech compared to previous speeches he's made. Did he misspeak, or is he just getting back up to speed after not delivering speeches in a while? Is what I watched somehow age-related? The last thing we need after having Bumbles Biden at the helm for two years is to have another befuddled old man looking to take his place.
I'm not saying that I think Trump is bewildered in any way, shape, or form. Maybe I'm more attuned to what these things look like after watching Bumbles make a fool of himself on the world stage repeatedly. I will say that I thought there was something about how Trump took a drink of bottled water a couple of times during his speech that got me wondering. It was almost as though Trump was doing his level best to make sure that his hands didn't shake or something worse as he went to quench his thirst. These comparisons and others like them, however petty they sound, will be grist for the political mill once Trump gets on the debate stage with more youthful candidates. It will amplify and exacerbate any age-related shortcomings we see in Trump. It will remind everyone and anyone watching that it may be time to elect someone more youthful to the highest office in our land. Political leanings aside, think JFK.
I like that everything we're likely to hear now coming out of the Trump camp will be taken in a political context and not just the usual sour grapes we hear coming from the guy standing on the sidelines after losing his last election. Let bygones be bygones, is what I say. Trump needs to keep his messages forward-looking and to the point. People don't like things about Trump, so let's see if Trump can change those things up for the better going forward. I'm not sure we have to worry about his mean tweets since he's not back on Twitter, at least as of this morning. It makes me wonder just a little bit about the outcome of the mid-term elections in Arizona and whether or not Trump's comments before 2016 about John "Songbird" McCain not being a hero back in the day have now come back to haunt those candidates who currently support Trump and who went on to lose this past Tuesday. Do I think that Trump should quit while he's ahead? That horse has left the barn.
I told you that this FTX thing was going to get worse before it got better. It's not just a story about a Bermuda-based crypto exchange run by some 20-something wunderkind that went belly up. We're now finding out that taxpayer dollars sent to Ukraine by the billions in support of their efforts to defend themselves against the Russian invaders over the last year or more were then laundered by FTX and subsequently doled out by FTX in the form of kickbacks to mostly democratic politicians in the United States to support their political campaigns.
How much Ukraine and Ukraine's president Zelensky ended up with is not yet known. Is there any doubt that Joe Bumbles Biden and the Biden Crime Family got their cut? None whatsoever. FTX has been a major donor to the democrat party since the founding of FTX, and we now have a better idea as to how they came by the funds they needed to make said contributions. The extent of the stench around this fraudulent conveyance of funds and the political influence it bought and paid for is almost incalculable. A worst-case scenario, if you will.
Maxine Waters, the congresswoman from California, when asked about the donations from FTX to her campaign, responded as follows: "Both parties received donations." Oh, okay. I guess that makes it okay. Let me see if I have this right. These same politicians who approve the payment of taxpayer monies to fund the war in Ukraine are also beneficiaries of the monies that they are approving. Maybe politicians getting kickbacks is nothing new in the scheme of things, but this thing stinks to high heaven. The United States is the largest donor to the war effort in Ukraine, and Ukraine isn't even on our fucking continent. I guess we now know why we're shoveling money hand over fist to Zelensky and his ilk in Ukraine. We are also starting to see how all of the pieces fit together when republicans have been at their wit's end trying to explain how the democrats did as well as they did in the mid-term elections. FTX essentially funded get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of the democrats.
I have a question. How much did the Minority Leader (Mitch McConnell) in the Senate get from FTX, and what role did those donations play in suppressing efforts to get certain republican senators elected? We know that McConnell played fast and loose with dollars when it came to certain candidates who, were they to win their races, would give Republicans the Senate. He actually withdrew funding from certain senatorial candidates in the days leading up to the elections when they were seemingly on the cusp of pulling off an upset against their Democratic opponent. It's all so obvious now.
Can the same be said for Minority Leader McCarthy in the House of Representatives? We know he pulled funds from the Leavitt campaign here in New Hampshire, so I guess you could say we have the receipts. So, you see now that this isn't just a story about some kid running a crypto exchange. It was also well known that FTX spread a lot of money around to publishing houses to make sure that certain articles were written to cast FTX and, more specifically, its founder, SBF, in the best light possible.
The bottom line here, Ukraine aside, is that FTX funded the theft of our mid-term elections with taxpayer dollars and with the explicit consent and involvement (votes) of politicians on both sides of the aisle. How do they then hold hearings to suss out the specifics of the case? Is this not a criminal proceeding, or are politicians somehow protected by virtue of their protected status as elected officials? How is it that FTX wasn't able to cover its financial shortfalls by yet another tranche of monies approved by the US government before having to declare bankruptcy? Like any other Bernie Madoff-style pyramid scheme, timing is everything,
Can you imagine the consequences had all of this come to light before the mid-term elections? I'm still scratching my head trying to understand why it had to happen at all, especially when you consider that we're still cutting checks to Ukraine. Someone had to know that when this house of cards came tumbling down that they would be exposed. We also know there is a double standard when it comes to the application of the law between the democrats and the republicans. I think we need a few more cards to come out of the deck before we know how this is going to play out.
It sounds like the Republican Majority in the House of Representatives is finally going to look into the Biden Crime Family and their corruption. None of that was happening when the Democrats were in power. They had nothing but praise for their bumbling and demented leader sitting in the Oval Office. You know, the guy who sniffs the hair of young children every chance he gets. Yes, the very same guy that has been taking ten percent off the top of every influence-peddling deal he and his son, Hunter, have put together since they began selling access to everything under the sun.
I was hoping that the American people would go to the polls during the midterms and express their outrage by voting against the democrats. Little did I know that there were other forces at play that would have the Republicans coming up short. Nonetheless, the Republicans are now in charge of the House of Representatives, so proceed they will in taking the Biden Family to task for selling out their country for personal gain. It ain't going to be pretty.
The Ev man and I dropped his car off at the dealership in Exeter last night. We need them to diagnose the code that keeps coming up when I try to get his car inspected. I think the code suggests an issue with the catalytic converter, but my local guy can't tell me with any degree of certainty whether it's something as simple as an oxygen sensor or something pricier like a new catalytic converter. I can't have him replacing parts willy-nilly until the code goes away, so off to the dealership it goes. If it's an expensive fix, then so be it. I'm not going to run around looking to see if I can have it done elsewhere for less. Just bite the bullet, Johnny. Get it done and get it done right the first time. Ev will be happier about it, and so will I. We picked up a couple of subs across the street from the dealership, and I dropped him back at his place. Now, I just wait for the call from the dealership to let me know what they've found. Fingers crossed.
The missus and I stopped into a Chipolte at the mall yesterday afternoon. We were looking to pick up a couple of burritos for a quick pick-me-up. While waiting to place our order, we noticed a few things that gave us pause. The missus was the first to notice that there was a notable shortage of employees compared to what we were accustomed to seeing at this particular store. That, in and of itself, was not a big deal. That said, we watched intently as the lone employee behind the counter rolled up burritos for the customers ahead of us. She was doing a particularly bad job of it.
Her final product resembled more of an engorged mushroom than the usual cylindrically shaped delight that we're accustomed to. Maybe she was a new employee. Maybe she never got the hang of rolling up burritos Chipolte-style. Whatever. We also noticed that the place wasn't all that clean. The missus and I looked at each other, and we decided almost simultaneously that we'd seen enough. Chipolte has had issues with cleanliness before, and it didn't end well for them in a lot of respects. We gave up our place in line and placed our order with a Chipolte across town, where we hoped to do better. Maybe this speaks to the bigger issue of how much of the sausage-making you want your customers to see while they wait in line to place their orders. Food for thought.
If it isn't one thing, it's another. I was just getting started down Ocean Boulevard on my bike the other day when I noticed that my gear shifting became totally untethered. I got zero resistance when shifting from one gear to the next, and I was all of a sudden in either the highest or lowest gear, I'm not sure which. You know, the one that you want to be in when you're going down a steep hill and you want to keep up or increase your speed by the time you get to the bottom of the hill. There was no way I was going to be able to complete my ride. It would require more effort and muscle than I could possibly muster.
I was wondering if I had what it took to get home, much less complete my usual hour-long ride. There was one stretch of road as I headed home where I needed to get off my bike and walk it up the incline. Thankfully, it was all downhill from there. What I discovered once I got home was that my gear wire had snapped, and it was now hanging loose off the frame of the bike. Dang. It's been at the shop now for a couple of days, and I hope to pick it up later today. It's probably just the usual wear and tear kind of stuff. Better that it happens now than during the winter when breaking down on the road can become a little trickier.
The missus and I will be traveling to Massachusetts today to assist a friend (Mr. R) with getting his new iMac up and running. He's been on a PC platform all these past years and is finally taking the plunge. I'll be in the driver's seat for the changeover, and the missus will be lending a hand here and there as needed. Mr. R is not a techie by any stretch of the imagination, so I assume that what I'll find when I get there is that he has nothing more than a collection of documents and a few photos that will have to be moved from his PC to his Mac.
Apple has a migration application that I'll be using for the first time to move settings and other things that are less obvious to the naked eye. If that doesn't work for whatever reason, I may have to use my handy dandy flash drive to move things. This shouldn't be complicated. The good news is that I can't break anything, and I can't lose anything if I get this right. He also has Carbonite, so I might look to download what they have in its entirety just so we have a complete file on hand after all is said and done.
There is somewhat of a fly in the ointment now that the day has arrived to take this trip down to Massachusetts. Apple posted something overnight about holiday savings that they are offering for purchases made between November 25th and the 28th. The offer includes up to $250 dollars off (an Apple Gift Card) for the purchase of certain items, such as Mr. R's iMac. If I'm not mistaken, Mr. R has yet to unpack his new iMac, so it may be worth a try to give the Apple store a call to inquire about their return policy. I'm quite certain that the store doesn't want the return, so they may be willing to negotiate one thing or the other to avoid the physical return of the computer.
So, should we or should we not make this trip? Should the missus give Mr. R a call to see what he wants to do? Knowing Mr. R as I think I do, he is going to want to see what, if anything, can be done to take advantage of the offer. At a minimum, maybe that means delaying our trip until he can arrange to avail himself of the discount, whatever that looks like. We won't be leaving the house here for a few hours, and the missus is still fast asleep, so I'll discuss it with her when she comes around. I don't think not telling Mr. R about the discount is an option. Mrs. R would likely agree with that assessment.
This thing with the Ev man's car has become something of a cluster fuck. I don't even want to tell you what they (Volvo dealership) told me about how much it's going to cost to fix. It's so expensive that I'll need to ask about an aftermarket solution if one exists. Even with the aftermarket parts, the expense will be extraordinarily expensive. And then, thanks to known supply chain issues, I'll be paying more and waiting longer than would otherwise be necessary for the parts needed for the fix. I just can't catch a break with this damn thing. I want to do the right thing for the Ev man here, but it's going to cost me dearly. I'll have a chat with my local mechanic and see what, if anything, he can do about the aftermarket dilemma so we can move forward with getting this fixed. The weird part is that the car runs great, so that's not the issue. It's all about the catalytic converters. It's no fucking wonder you hear about people stealing these things (and getting arrested) left and right. Wish me luck.
What the hell! Who stabbed and killed those four beautiful college students in Idaho? It's unbelievable. I think the coppers are keeping a lid on things as best they can, but they aren't offering much to the public. People living in the community are concerned, and as well they should be, as they have a killer walking around in their midst. No person or persons of interest have been identified as yet, so I have to imagine that everyone in the community is locked and loaded and hunkered down behind closed doors. Are we talking about a deranged drifter here? Is this a lover's spat gone awry?
I was telling the missus that I could see a killer going from room to room, slitting throats along the way. There wouldn't be much noise, certainly not enough to wake a sleeping household from a deep sleep. This is almost Ted Bundy-level stuff, but Bundy was more likely to bludgeon his victims to death than slit their throats from ear to ear. It's no wonder students from the local university have left early and, without permission, to be with their families for Thanksgiving. The missus says that many will likely not return after the holiday. I think she's right.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, the Ev man and I will be heading over to Whole Foods on Tuesday to pick up the items we ordered. I'm a little hard-pressed to call this a tradition, and I'm talking about the Ev man coming with me to Whole Foods, but this is the second year in a row where he's coming along for the ride. He's not a fan of going into these kinds of places, but he did just fine last year, so I suspect he's gotten over whatever hump he needs to get over to do it again.
It was a little disorganized last year when we went to pick up our order, and I think the Ev man found that to be challenging in a fun sort of way. We went here, there, and everywhere inside the store, looking to piece together the items we had ordered online, and it just wasn't falling in place as one might otherwise expect from an Amazon-owned store like Whole Foods. Amazon is all about connecting the dots when it comes to the organization and delivery of goods. No? I wanted to make this paragraph about the Ev man, but it morphed into a larger story about Amazon and its subsidiary, Whole Foods.
I'll finish up this week's bloggy stuff by saying that we did about as much as we could when we visited Mr. R in Massachusetts. We got his new iMac up and running, and that took the better part of the day. It took longer than I expected it would. The migration of his data from his PC to his new iMac was pretty straightforward once we got our arms around it. I'm a little less well-versed when it comes to using PC's so I had a few issues there. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to quit the application, Chrome, on the PC since it was interfering with the migration process that I was trying to get up and running.
I ended up uninstalling the application, and that did the trick. I tried to establish a wired connection between the devices to migrate the data, but that wasn't working out either, so we did everything wirelessly. I also wasn't able to establish a wireless connection between his printer and the iMac. We're going to need to bring a printer cable with us when we go down to finish the job. I wasn't expecting to make a second trip, but there you have it. Here's hoping Mr. R takes my advice and spends a little bit of time looking at iMac tutorials on YouTube. It's a good a place as any to start. You (he) can do this.